Your Cable Bill Is Increasing In 2015 And You Can Blame It On Sports

Depending on your pay-TV provider, your bill is going to increase in 2015 due to surcharge increases that carriers are claiming is due to the rising cost of sports programming.

According to Multichannel News,
Time Warner Cable is the latest to impose a surcharge increase due to sports programming. The fee will rise from $2.25 to $2.75 a month for subscribers whose slate of channels include
ESPN and the regional sports networks, often owned by
Comcast or FOX Sports.

Other carriers that have hiked fees include Cablevision Systems, DirecTV and Mediacom Communications.

According to the report, TWC also will “increase its monthly modem lease fee from $5.98 to $8 next year. Customers can avoid the lease charge if they purchase their own modems.”

Not everyone will be hit with the surcharge increase, according to Multichannel News:

About 75% of customers that receive
Time Warner Cable’s standard TV service or above will not be charged the Sports Programming Fee because they are currently under promotional offers. Their monthly charges will increase once their promotional period ends.

According to TWC, the reason for the increase is due to the steep escalation in media rights fees for sports programing. They are claiming that broadcast fees have increased 60 percent in the last two years, and since 2008 the cost of sports programming has increased 91 percent.

In a case of the ironic, Time Warner Cable manages SportsNet LA which is owned by the Los Angeles Dodgers. The deal that is reportedly over $8.35 billion over the 25 year life of the contract. The inability for TWC to garner broad distribution of the network has cut into their bottom line. In August, TWC lowered its revenue projections from for the year due to the carriage impasse with SportsNet LA to as low as 3.5 percent from 4.5 percent. Operating income projections were lowered to a range of 3.75 percent to 4.75 percent from 5-6 percent. On top of that, SportsNet LA saw operating costs jump 56 percent while profit for the unit dropped 26 percent to $173 million.

For those that have other Pay-TV providers, according to a separate report, “Cablevision said that due to increased programming costs, the monthly Sports and Broadcast TV Surcharge would rise from $4.98 per month to $5.98 per month beginning in January.” DirecTV will be expanding a $3 surcharge increase that they implemented in August due to other regional sports networks in the spring of 2015.

Maury Brown is the owner of Bizball, LLC, a research and analytics company, as well as a member of the BBWAA. Follow him on Twitter @BizballMaury or on Facebook.